Hanging With the Sloth

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IntroductionNaming the Sloth

When early Spanish explorers descended upon the
New World they encountered many strange animals, and described these exotic beasts upon their
return to Europe. One such explorer was Oviedo
y Valds, who published a natural history of the
Indies in 1526. A Spanish knight and historian,
he made several visits to the Americas, where he
traveled extensively. He described the sloth as the
stupidest animal that can be seen in the worldone
whose belly nearly dragged the ground when it
walked. He exaggerated that the animal was so slow
in its movements that to walk the distance of fifty
paces would require an entire day.
According to Oviedo, some of the first Christians
who saw the sloth gave it the antithetical name
perico ligero, or nimble peter. Many natives
today still use this term, or shorten it to perico.
Edward Topsell, an English writer, described the
animal in his illustrated work, Historie of Fourefooted Beastes, Describing the True and Lively
Figure of Every Beast. When it is tame, he wrote,
it is very loving to a man, and desireth to climbe
upe to his shoulders, which those naked Amerycans
cannot endure, by reason of the sharpnesse of his
Clawes.
The first reference to this animal as a sloth was in
1613. Samuel Purchase wrote that the Portuguese
had begun to refer to it as preguia, which means
sloth. However the natives referred to it as ai, an
onomatopoeia derived from a sighing sound that
sloths sometimes make when in distress. Purchase
wrote, The Preguia of Brasill, is worth the seeing;
it is like a shag-haire Dog, or a Landspaniell, they
are very ougly and the face is like a womans evill
drest, his fore and hinder feet are long, hee hath
great clawes and cruell, they goe with the breast on
the earth, and their young fast to the bellie. Though
yee strike it never so fast it goeth so leisurely that
it hath need of a long time to get up a tree, and so
they are easily taken.
By this time the church had developed the seven
deadly sinsa centuries-old list of transgressions
that were said to be spiritually fatal. Authors of this

list designed it to cover myriad human shortcomings, yet be simple enough for the illiterate peasant
to comprehend. The process of identifying the sins
required several hundred years, beginning in the
fourth century.
The Greek monastic theologian Evagrius of Pontus
identified eight evil offenses that were, in increasing
order of seriousness: gluttony, lust, avarice, sadness, anger, acedia, vainglory and pride. As severity
increases with focus on self, he considered pride
the worst of transgressions. Sloth had not yet found
its way onto the list. The closest, acedia, is derived
from the Greek akedia, or not to care. It has
also been defined as spiritual lethargy.
In the early fifth century St. John Cassian proposed
that excesses of each sin would lead to the one that
follows. For example, gluttony would lead to anger.
Then once one had succumbed to anger, avarice
became inevitable.
Pope St. Gregory (Gregory the Great) was a big fan
of Cassian. In the late 500s he re-worked the categories, folding vainglory into pride and acedia into
sadness. He also added envy. He inverted the order,
believing that pride was not only the most serious,
but also the root of all sin. His categories served
for centuries as the Seven Deadly Sins. These were
pride, envy, anger, sadness, avarice, gluttony and
lust. His ranking of the sins seriousness was based
on the degree from which they offended against
love.
Although it wasnt yet considered one of the worst
of sins, sloth was seriously disapproved of within the
church. Thomas Aqinas, a thirteenth-century Catholic philosopher and theologian, defined sloth as
sluggishness of the mind which neglects to begin
good [it] is evil in its effect, if it so oppresses man
as to draw him away entirely from good deeds.
Aquinas considered a sin to be capital if it leads to
commission of other sins. Thus greed leads to stealing, cheating and lying; sloth ignores the dictates of
charity out of our apathy to spiritual matters.
Pieter Bruegels 1558 depictions of the Seven Deadly Sins included desidia which is Latin for laziness rather than acedia.

In 1606 Thomas Decker, in The Seven Deadly Sins

of London, described daily life in London that he
believed reflected temporary victory of the Seven
Deadly Sins. He referred to This nastie, and loathsome sin of Sloth He continued, Sloth, by reason
that he is troubled with the gout, busies himselfe
little with State matters.
In the seventeenth century the church formally
replaced the vague sin of sadness with pigritia, or
sloththe avoidance of physical or spiritual work.
In his book, The Seven Deadly Sins, Solomon Shimmel defines sloth as indifference to the pain and
suffering of others. According to Schimmel, the
contemporary definition of sloth focuses on physical
laziness. But in the past it included acedia, an aimless indifference to ones responsibilities to God
and Man, as well as tristitia, meaning sadness or
sorrow.
Once European visitors to the New World began
referring to the poor creatures as sloths, then, they
were destined to be maligned and abused. Oviedo
wrote, He goes around at his own gait; and neither
by threat, blow, nor prodding does he move any
faster tha he is accustomed to do without tiring.
As was the case with many of the animals they
discovered and described, sloths were poorly understood. Because neither he nor his men had ever seen
a sloth eat, but they noticed it turning its head into
the wind, Oviedo concluded, I could never perceive
but that they live only of air.
The early explorers also believed that the sloths
lethargy was due to heart trouble, which the animals attempted to remedy by scratching over their
hearts with their long claws.
Buccaneer Exquememelin in 1678 wrote that a
Captain Sharp captured a sloth on a small island,
noting that it was an animal well-deserving that
name.
The sloth moves so slowly that exaggeration seems
neither sporting nor necessary. Nevertheless they
couldnt help themselves. Nehemiah Grew in 1681
wrote, The Sloath an animal of so slow a motion,

that he will be three or four days, at least, in climbing up and coming down a tree.
Abuse continued upon this defenseless animal. Captain William Damper in Voyages, wrote in 1697, It
takes them eight or nine minutes to move one of
their feet three inches forward; and they move all
their four feet one after another, at the same slow
rate; neither will stripes make them mend their
pace; which I have tried to do, by whipping them;
but they seem insensible, and can neither be frightened, or provoked to move faster.
Edward Bancroft in his Essay on the Natural History of Guiana, published in 1769, wrote that When
by beating they are forced to move, they make the
most melancholy pitiful noise and grimaces.
In 1749 the great French naturalist George-Louis
Leclerc, Comte de Buffon provided the first detailed
description of the sloth. It was included in his 44volume encyclopedia in which he tried to include
everything that was known about the natural world.
He described the sloths anatomy, including stomach, intestines, teeth and bones. However, Buffon
never saw a live sloth. His descriptions were base
on, at best, second-hand information. So naturally
he maligned them.
From a defect in their conformation, the misery
of these animals is not more conspicuous than their
slowness. They have no cutting teeth; the eyes are
obscured with hair; the cops are heavy and thick;
the hair is flat, and resembles withered herbs; the
thighs are ill jointed to the haunches; the legs are
too short, ill turned, and terminated still worse:
their feet have no soles, and no toes which to move
separately, but only two or three claws, disproportionately long, and bended downward, which move
together, and are more hurtful to their walking,
than advantageous in assisting them to climb.
His lengthy slur of the animal is quoted in nearly
every subsequent description, including this one. Its
just too good to pass up.
Slowness, habitual pain, and stupidity, are the
results of this strange and bungled conformation.
The sloths have no weapons either offensive or de-

fensive. They are furnished with no means of safety;

for they can neither fly nor dig the earth. Confined
to a small space, or to the tree under which they are
brought forth, they are prisoners in the midst of
space, and cannot move the length of one fathom in
an hour. They drag themselves up a tree with much
labour and pain. Their cry and interrupted accents
they dare only utter during the night. All these
circumstances announce the misery of the sloths,
and recal to our minds those defective monsters,
those imperfect sketches of Nature, which, being
hardly endowed with the faculty of existence, could
not subsist for any length of time, and have accordingly been struck out of the list of beings One
other defect added to the number would have totally
prevented their existence
Buffon supposed that The degraded species of
sloths are perhaps the only creatures to whom Nature has been unkind, and who exhibit to us the picture of innate misery. He was confounded that the
animal managed to survive. When on the ground,
they are at the mercy of all their enemies. As their
flesh is not absolutely bad, both men and rapacious
animals go in quest of these animals. It appears that
they do not multiply fast, or, at least, if they produce
frequently, it must be in small numbers at a time;
for they have only two paps. Every circumstance,
therefore, concurs to destroy them; and it is extremely difficult for the species to support itself.
He proposed that the tenacity of the animal provided some explanation for the species continued
survival. But, though slow, awkward, and almost
incapable of motion, they are obstinate, strong, and
tenacious of life. They can live very long without
victuals of any kind Moreover, if the misery resulting from a defect of sentiment be not the worst
of all, the pain endured by the sloths, though very
apparent, seems not to be real; for their sensations
appear to be blunt. Their calamitous air, their dull
aspect, and their reception of blows without emotion, announce their extreme insensibility. This
bluntness of sensation is farther demonstrated by
their not dying instantly when their hearts and
bowels are entirely cut out. Piso, who made this
cruel experiment, tells us that the heart, after being
separated from the body, beat in a lively manner for
half an hour

Buffon was highly respected, and therefore so was

his lengthy diatribe regarding the unfitness of the
poor sloth. His conclusions were questioned little
for the next several centuries. In 1825 Oliver Goldsmith considered that it represented an unfinished
production of naturethe meanest and most illformed of creatures that chew the cud.
Baron Cuviers The Animal Kingdom in 1837 proposed that Nature seems to have amused herself by
producing something imperfect and grotesque.
Sloths were scientifically named in 1831. They belong to the Xenartha order of mammals along with
armadillos and anteaters. The order Xenartha was
once extensive and included the now extinct giant
ground sloths. Contemporary sloths are classified
in the family Bradypodidae. While all sloths have
three long claws on their rear feet, the two genus
are distinguished by the number of claws on their
forefeet. The Choloepus, or two-toed sloth, is an
omnivore, eating leaves, fruits, small slow-moving
creatures and bird eggs. The Bradypus, or threetoed sloth, is an herbivore, subsisting on a variety
of leaves and fruits. Both types tend to occupy the
same forests. The genus are as different as cats and
dogs, and scientists believe they evolved separately
from very different origins, beginning about 35 million years ago.
They are found in the rainforest canopies of Central
and South America, as far north as Honduras and
Nicaragua and as far south as northern Brazil and
Bolivia on both sides of the Andes.
William Swainson, Esq., wrote in 1836, Their
arms and fore-arms are much longer than their
thighs, so that when they walk they are obliged to
draw themselves along on their elbows. Their thighs
are so wide apart, that they cannot bring their
knees together. Were we to draw our own conclusions from what all authors have written about this
animal, we should suppose that nature had departed
from her usual course in the formation of this extraordinary creature, which appears to us so forlorn
and miserable, so ill put together, and so totally unfit to enjoy the blessings which have been so bountifully given to all other quadrupeds: for he has no
soles to his feet, and he is evidently ill at ease when

he tries to move on the ground; it is then that he

looks up in your face with a countenance that says,
Have pity on me, for I am in pain and sorrow.
By this time some of these animals had been
brought back to Europe, but none survived the
voyage. Swainson wrote, they have never been
brought to Europe alive. Living, indeed, only in the
hottest parts of South America, and feeding upon
the foliage of certain trees peculiar to those regions,
their transportation to this country is naturally attended with difficulties almost insurmountable.
We not only discovered the Bradypus melanotus,
claimed Swainson, but we actually ate him
Artists drawings based on the corpses as well as the
written accounts resulted in some hilariously inaccurate sketches.

Although their strange conformation was still poorly understood and insulted, a few naturalists began
to perceive them differently. Swainson was the first
to point out that the sloth had not been observed in
his proper haunts. When viewed on the ground,
the sloth is so ill-suited and awkward, as to acquire
for him the name of sloth. He proposed, See him,
however, upon a branch, and his aspect is altogether
different. This writer was first to recognize the
life for which it is so admirably and beautifully
adapted while its extraordinary formation and
singular habits are but further proofs of the wondrous works of Omnipotence.
We cannot, indeed, agree with Buffon, that species of animals have been created or organized for
misery, continued Swainson. We suspect, on the
contrary, that there is little or no misery in the
animal world, or at least among animals in a state
of nature.
Eventually others began to agree. Although by
older naturalists sloths were regarded as ill-formed
creatures destined to lead a miserable life on account of their misshapen limbs, no animals are in
reality better adapted to their peculiar mode of
existence
English writer Charles Waterton moved to British
Guyana in 1804 and resided there for many years.
His book, Wanderings in South America, reflected
a better understanding of the sloth and offered an
explanation for the common misunderstanding.
It mostly happens that Indians and negroes are
the people who catch the sloth and bring it to the
white man these errors have naturally arisen by
examining the sloth in those places where Nature
never intended that he should be exhibited. Though
all other quadrupeds may be described while resting upon the ground, the sloth is an exception to
this rule, and that his history must be written while
he is in the tree. Waterton argued, The sloth is
as much at a loss to proceed on his journey upon a
smooth and level floor, as a man would be who had
to walk a mile on stilts upon a line of featherbeds.

Bradypus as drawn by 18th Century French

naturalist Alcide DOrbigny (18021857)

Waterton also discouraged the abuse of sloths.

His looks, his gestures and his cries all conspire to
entreat you to take pity on him. These are the only

weapons of defense which Nature hath given him.

While other animals assemble in herds, or in pairs
range through these boundless wilds, the sloth is
solitary and almost stationary. He cannot escape
from you. It is said his piteous moans make the
tiger relent and turn out of the way. Do not then
level your gun at him or pierce him with a poisoned
arrowhe has never hurt one living creature.
Some have pointed out that a sloth could better be
described as a four-armed, rather than a four-legged
animal. While legs are dominated by extensor muscles designed to bear weight, arms are dominated by
retractor muscles designed to pull. A sloths survival
is therefore predicated upon drawing in rather than
pushing away, and is clearly well designed for living
in the trees. On the ground it is relatively helpless,
barely able to support its own weight. On a flat
surface its claws scratch around in a futile effort to
gain purchase.

A sloth in the road is a helpless animal

Photograph by Jeri Ledbetter

In an undisturbed rainforest a sloth would have

little reason to crawl upon the ground, as it would
be able to move from tree to tree across the canopy.
But when humans clear the forest, sloths are invariably forced to the ground. Out of their element,
defenseless and painfully obvious, this is how humans typically see a sloth.

In the early 1900s William Beebe conducted the

first true research of the Bradypus, studying them
at Kartabo, British Guyana, for several years. In
a lengthy article appearing in Zoologica in 1926
Beebe offered a description that, while sometimes
hilarious, was unfettered with blatant anthropomorphic bias. Noting Buffons claim that one more
defect would have prevented the sloths existence,
he pointed out that A sloth in Paris would doubtless fulfill the prophecy of the French scientist, but
on the other hand, Buffon clinging upside-down to
a branch of a tree in the jungle would expire even
sooner.
When a sloth lifts itself from branch to branch,
drawing its whole weight upward with three fingers
and no effort, he said, one is forced to admiration, as in the supremely graceful, effortless feats of
superlative acrobats
Although less judgmental of the
Bradypus, Beebe was unable to
refrain from sarcasm. On the
capturing of sloths Beebe wrote,
At first they show the resignation to fate characteristic of the
free animal when approached on
their native branch. They roll up,
hide their heads, and wait for the
blow to descend, or to pass. After
a few days when there comes to
their dull comprehension the fact
that my presence does not mean
physical harm, they begin to move
about freely and to feed, and with
this phase is correlated a pacifistic
resentment of my approach, and instead of cringing, they make futile
attacks with their fore claws, and
then climb slowly away.
Following Beebes work a new view
emerged of an animal that had been so long reviled.
As the theory of evolution became more widely accepted, naturalists began to recognize the remarkable adaptations of the sloth for life in the rainforest canopy.

So What Is a Sloth?
Sloths are remarkably well adapted to an arboreal
browsing lifestyle. Their fur grows in the opposite
direction of most animals, effectively shedding water away from their bodies when they hang upsidedown. Several types of algae grow in their fur, providing camouflage. Their specialized hands and feet
have long, curved claws that allow them to hang
upside-down from branches with very little effort.

Three-toed sloth
Photograph by Jeri Ledbetter

Leaves, their main food source, provide little energy

or nutrition and do not digest easily. To adjust for
this sloths have very large, specialized, slow-acting
stomachs with multiple compartments in which
symbiotic bacteria break down the tough leaves.
As much as two-thirds of a well-fed sloths body
weight consists of digestive organs and their contents. The digestive process can take as long as a
month to complete. Sloths utilize their low-energy
food source with a range of economy measures.
They have very low metabolic rates (less than half
of that expected for a creature of their size), and
maintain very low body temperatures.
Sloths move only when necessary and then very
slowly: they have about half as much muscle tissue
as other animals of similar weight. They can move

at a marginally higher speed if they are in immediate danger from a predator, but they burn large
amounts of energy doing so.
They also sleep a lotas much as 18 hours a day.
They sometimes hang upside-down from a branch
to snooze, but more often curl up into a little furry
ball in the fork of tree limbs.
Their skeletons are quite unusual as well. While
most mammals have seven cervical
vertebrae (including the giraffe),
the Choloepus has only six. However, the Bradypus is graced with
nine. This adaptation allows them
to crane their heads around 360
degrees horizontally, and another
270 degrees vertically. This leads to
some bizarre and alarming contortions.
Sloths spend most of their time in
the trees, where they move gracefully upside-down using their powerful, hook-like claws. They rarely
venture to the ground, where they
are awkward and quite vulnerable
to attack. However, they are strong
and graceful swimmers, floating
effortlessly on their bellies or using
all four limbs to move. They remain remarkably high, even when their fur is well
soaked. Most of the propulsion is generated by the
front legs, which swing wide on each side nearly
to the tail. The hind legs and posterior half of the
body waggle feebly from side to side, wrote Beebe,
to meet first one, then the other backward-coming front leg. They have been observed swimming
across lakes and rivers to new feeding grounds. A
male Bradypus can swim at a rate of more than
twenty-five feet per minute.
They are solitary animals, pairing only long enough
to mate. The mother bears one infant at a time, and
carries it clinging to her belly for up to a year as it
learns the ways of the sloth.
Sloths are known for their tenacity to life, clinging
to survival well beyond what any other animal could

The two species of Choloepus

are faster moving, yet they still
doze up to 18 hours a day. They
are larger as well than the Bradypus, weighing up to twice as
much. In addition to leaves, they
eat slow-moving creatures and
bird eggs.
The Bradypus
The Bradypus are by far the
most lethargic of the species.
The scientific name is derived
from the Latin brady, meaning slow, and pus meaning
foot.
Sloths are good swimmers
Photograph by Jeri Ledbetter

endure. They have remarkable freedom from infection following injury. Beebe reported the recovery
of a sloth, with no apparent ill effects, after forty
minutes of immersion in water. One was said to
have survived for thirty hours after decerebration,
and many have witnessed a sloth falling up to 90
feet to the forest floor without injury.
Of all animals, not even the toad or tortoise excepted, this poor ill-formed creature is the most tenacious of life, wrote Charles Waterton. It exists
long after it has received wounds which would have
destroyed any other animal; and it may be said, on
seeing a mortally wounded sloth, that life disputes
with death every inch of flesh in its body.

Noted for their slowness of

movement and fondness of
sleep, three-toed sloths are physically incapable of rapid movement. They are often
found in the Ccropia tree, the leaves and fruits of
which are a favored food. The design of this palmlike tree is reminiscent of Dr. Seusswith only a few
leaves at the very top of tall, thin trunks.
Their bodies are covered with thick hair about
two inches long that varies in color with indistinct
patches of white, black, brown and auburn. It looks
quite course, but is surprisingly soft. The long outer
hairs are oval shaped with shallow air pockets and
deep transverse cracks that encourage colonization
of algae.

Besides their main defenses of camouflage, stealth

and tenacious grips, their hides are tough, with a
heavy coat of hair and dense underfur. Their organs
are protected by 23 pair of ribs.

During the rainy season this algae becomes noticeably green, which helps camouflage them against
the rainforest backdrop. In the dry season the algae
appears dirty brown, and the sloth almost disappears among dead leaves and bark.

Their primary predators are anacondas, jaguars

and harpy eagles. In an effort to warm themselves,
sloths tend to sleep high in the trees between six
and ten in the morning when the harpy eagle usually hunts. This makes them susceptible to attack;
sloths constitute about 1/3 of the diet of this large
endangered raptor.

Several specialized moths and beetles live in the

sloths fur. When the sloth descends to the ground
to urinate and defecate, only about once a week,
the sloths lay eggs in the dung. Unlike nearly everything else in the jungle, sloth dung decomposes very
slowly, which allows the eggs time to hatch as well
as provides a feast for the larvae.

Beneath all the fur is very little massthey weigh

only about eight pounds. On most species, males
are distinguished by a bright orange patch on their
backs.

no effect upon male sloths, he said, but D-sharp

aroused all the interest which their poor, dull minds
could bring to bear. Gestation lasts between four
and six months, with about one year between births.

A sloth can inflict severe wounds by using its claws

in a swinging scythe-like sweep of the forearm,
but even an angered three-toed sloth is rarely compelled to do so. And although its jaws have powerful
muscles, the bite is easy enough to avoid. William
Beebe wrote, When fully enraged, having mentally
attained the emotional level of annoyance of other
wild animals, male sloths will, at this stage, slowly
reach forward with the head, open the mouth and
attempt a languid bite.

William Beebe claimed that all of a sloths senses

are on a very low order of development. Compared
with those of most mammals, mans acuity is extremely low, yet it is higher than a Bradypus in
every area except the sense of smell.

A Bradypus wont reach sexual maturity for up to

six years. They are rarely seen together except when
mating. The female Bradypus produces a shrill
scream, almost painful to the human ear. It lasts
several seconds; she will repeat it every hour or so
for several days to solicit a mate. Beebe experimented with reproducing the tone, which he claimed was
upper D-sharp. Surrounding notes as C or E had

Three-toed sloth on the ground

Photograph by Jeri Ledbetter

Bradypus sloths have very poor eyesight. Their eyes

are round, convex and set wide apart. They are
primarily adapted for low light and have low acuity.
Adult sloths cant move their eyes, but rather thrn
their heads, although infants have better acuity and
will follow with their eyes and move their heads in
the appropriate direction.
Their noses are small, black, hairless, soft and quite
moist. Sloths rely largely on their sense of smell
to find food, as well as to sniff for rotten branches
which might crack under their weight.
Their ears are small and
inconspicuous, barely visible
within the fur. Beebe didnt
think they were particularly
useful. I have fired a gun close
to a slumbering sloth, and to
one feeding, and aroused but
little attention, he claimed.
However he allowed that This
is perhaps due, not so much
to deafness, as to total lack of
interest in such a noise. This
is a key distinction. Certainly
it would not be in a sloths
interest to react to noise by
movement since they cant
run away; their best hope for
survival is not to react.
Their sense of touch is fairly
dull. Two or three nudges
will awaken the animal and
make it look sleepily in every
direction but the right one.
When wide awake and fencing

laboriously, if a sloth is touched on the back, it will

look up and down before it occurs to it to twist its
wonderfully mobile neck and look behind. Beebe
observed the sensory capacity of a Bradypus by
separating a mother from its baby. A baby sloth will
produce a loud bleating noise when separated from
its mother. The mother will sometimes respond, but
more often will simply search quietly.
In Beebes experiment, the infant cried mightily,
but the mother couldnt locate it. Many times she
looked straight in the direction of her offspring
climbing awkwardly along five feet away. But neither sight, hearing nor smell availed anything.
As soon as a sloth is born, the infants job is to cling
to its mothers fur. Occasionally a baby sloth will
lose its grip. As they are sturdily built, it will likely
survive the fall, yet may die anyway if the mother is

unable to locate it or unwilling to leave the safety of

the trees to retrieve it.
Scientists have pondered for decades why the Bradypus is so slow. It is certainly not due to a choice of
beng lazy, or due to the cruelty of a supreme being
as early accounts theorized. They are physically
incapable of rapid movement, largely due to the
type of muscle they have. Leaves, their primary food
source, have a low energy content; strict foliavores
tend to move slowly. Also the leaves they eat may
contain toxins that require a low rate of absorption.
Researchers have injected various stimulants, such
as epinephrine, which resulted in an increased heart
rate but not a quickening of the sloth.
The Future of the Sloth
Although unable to survive outside the tropical
rainforests of South and Central America, within
that environment sloths have been outstandingly
successful creatures: they can account for as much
as half the total energy consumption and two-thirds
of the total terrestrial mammalian biomass in some
areas.
Yet as man encroaches ever farther into New
World jungles, their numbers are in rapid decline.
Some human cultures are known to eat sloths, and
in some areas it is considered a delicacy. A member of the Guayami tribe on Isla Bastimientos in
Panama said that sloth bone is good for pain. They
dry the bones and grind them up to brew into a tea.
Another Guayami said he wont eat sloths because
they are so poor; they have nothing. Natives from
British Guyana believe that if you shoot a sloth
it will ruin your gun. Spanish friars warned, He
who eats of the flesh of the perico ligero dies of it;
because it is so phlegmatic.
The sloths greatest danger from humans is not
from being hunted, but from the ever-increasing
encroachment into their habitat. According to a
researcher, Dr. Des Gilmore, human activity is the
major threat to the continued existence of sloths.

Orphaned baby three-toed sloth

Photograph by Jeri Ledbetter

The two-fingered Choloepus hoffmanis is listed as a

threatened species. Of the five species of Bradypus,
the Maned Sloth, the Bradypus torquatus, is listed

The Pygmy sloth, recently discovered on a tiny island off the coast of Panama, is threatened
Photograph by Jeri Ledbetter

as endangered and the newly-discovered Pygmy

Sloth, Bradypus pygmaeus, was recently added to
the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
Although the Choloepus adapts well to zoos, it is
nearly impossible to maintain a Bradypus in captivity outside its normal habitat. With few exceptions,
three-toed sloths have lived no longer than a few
weeks or months in captivity. Their only hope of
survival is through protection of their habitat.
Try This Fun Exercise for All Ages
Three-toed sloths are physically incapable of anything but slow movement. They even blink slowly.
Pretend to be a sloth, not allowing any muscle to
move fastnot a finger, your head, or your eyes. Its
harder than you might think, and very relaxing.

RelatedWebsites
www.Slothmovie.com
www.Slothrescue.com
www.fundacionunau.org (Spanish)
www.Slothclub.org
www.ARKive
Further Reading
Beebe, William. The Three-Toed Sloth. Zoologica, 1926: 3-66.
Britton, S.W. Form and Function in the Sloth.
Quarterly Review of Biology 15:13-34 (1940): 190207.